New Dell Laptop

RWangs

Hey all, I'm a long time lurker in need of the HA forum's infinite wisdom :P

My girlfriend's parents bought her a laptop that should be coming in any day now. She doesn't know good software from bad software and asked me to help her out with her new university toy.

So I've actually got 3 questions:

1) Do Dell computers come with any extra/trial software that I should remove when she receives it?

2) Are there any applications that come with the actual OS (Vista or XP, unsure of which is bundle with the laptop) that I should remove or replace?

3) What are some useful applications, free or otherwise, that I could install to make the laptop more secure, efficient and productive?

Thanks to all of you in advance

devoir

They generally come with an antivirus trial, burning software and trials for AOL, from my experience. Dell also tends to bundle the Dell Network Assistant with home/home office laptops. All of these I prefer to remove.

If you don't have antivirus, at least load Free AVG Antivirus and Antispyware on the laptop, as well as Firefox.

Make sure you get them all nice and updated with Windows and Office if they got it.

Iceman.USAF

AIM or MSN or whatnot goes without saying.

If her school uses an exchange server, perhaps configuring Outlook or Outlook Express would be in order?

Otherwise, it's Thunderbird to the rescue!

For spyware
Ad-Aware SE Personal
Spybot! Search and Destroy
Microsoft Defender

For viruses
Macaffe ( I can't spell it, someone help me out here)
AVG
ANYTHING BUT NORTON! OH GOD!

For fun
VLC media player
Winamp
itunes (if she's got the iPod or whatnot)
Windows Media player latest edition.
Daemon Tools (if needed)

More fun (but not free) stuff
Nero
Photoshop
MS Office 07
Cyberlink DVD player
Alcohol 120%

I think thats about it. Not that you have to install it all, but I was just tossing out the stuff I have and use.

MKR

Good stuff:
Pidgin (instant messaging)
OpenOffice (spreadsheets, slideshows, documents)
The GIMP (image editing - takes a little getting used to if you're already familiar with another graphic editing package)
7Zip (supports every compression format she's likely to encounter)
Mozilla Thunderbird (Multi-platform and fully featured, so if she ever switches to mac or linux, there will be less of a learning curve)
Mozilla Firefox (see above)
Google Earth

Ruckus

Ya, looks like everyone's got all my suggestions covered, but I can't really stress enough that you should purge all traces of Norton Antivirus from your system, Uninstall it and Live update. Norton is absolutely the worst Antivirus product out there. And I say this not only as a former Norton user, but as a network tech who's used a lot of other AV products over the last five years.

My top three are McAfee, AVG, and Trendmicro.

If the notebook didn't ship with MS Office, it probably came with MS Works. As far as I know, it's still an oxymoron. OpenOffice is a viable alternative and costs nothing except the bandwidth to download it.

wunderbar

ya, MS works is pure and udder shit. My girlfriend's PC has works, and they used it for 2 years before I started dating her. Now I'm trying to slowly wane them off of it and towards OpenOffice. Been trying to do that for 6 months, but they are so used to the Works word processor(which is built off of Word 97 btw) that it's hard to get them to switch.

Also works uses this bloody .wps file format that is not compatable with anything, so I can't even un-install works to make them switch, as they won't be able to open any doc's they've created in the past 2 years.

RWangs

Thanks for the software ideas, guys!

Firefox was already on the list since she wass already smart enough to switch away from Internet Explorer (I know, she's a keeper :P)

I'll keep all of these ideas in mind. I almost forgot about how much spyware and viruses there are. The life of a Mac user ;-) (Not that OSX doesn't have its glitches and vulnerabilities, but that's not the point here. )

Thanks again for the ideas, if anyone has anything else to add, feel free, but you've already all been very helpful already!

DevoutlyApathetic

Burn it, burn it with fire.

My laptop was so much happier once I formatted the hard drive and just did a install from scratch. If you're up to it I'd definitely recommend this route.

Leave the restore partition though. No reason to tempt fate unless you really know what you're doing.

RWangs

DevoutlyApathetic wrote: »

Burn it, burn it with fire.

My laptop was so much happier once I formatted the hard drive and just did a install from scratch. If you're up to it I'd definitely recommend this route.

Leave the restore partition though. No reason to tempt fate unless you really know what you're doing.

That sounds like a pretty good idea, except that, from what I have heard, Dell laptops no longer come with Windows Install disks so it would basically be impossible to install from scratch.

MrIamMe

download a WinXP CD first, appropriate to what was bundled (xp pro/home).

In Australia, thats what dell support recommends (had a friend who needed to reinstall, I helped him out).

As to this being piracy, here you pay for the license not the software, so ensure you use your DELL xp code, and you should be fine.

Unless they do something crazy in america and have special WinXP:Dell Edition.

lordswing

RWangs wrote: »

DevoutlyApathetic wrote: »

Burn it, burn it with fire.

My laptop was so much happier once I formatted the hard drive and just did a install from scratch. If you're up to it I'd definitely recommend this route.

Leave the restore partition though. No reason to tempt fate unless you really know what you're doing.

That sounds like a pretty good idea, except that, from what I have heard, Dell laptops no longer come with Windows Install disks so it would basically be impossible to install from scratch.

it costs like $5 to buy the restore cds from Dell, if you don't have XP lying around

Aqua Dark

lordswing wrote: »

it costs like $5 to buy the restore cds from Dell, if you don't have XP lying around

Yea however, the restore disks usually come fully loaded with all the crap he is tring to get off, at least my HP restore disks did.

Beazle

Dell now ships Dell branded WinXP disks with all systems. They no longer charge the $10 for it. They only have windows on it. It does not have all the pre-installed software.

Mr.FragBait

Though I haven't tried it myself, the dell de-crapifier would probably be useful. It's an automated script that removes all the extra junk that dells ship with, and are on the restore partitions hidden on the laptop. The download is here.

RWangs

Mr.FragBait wrote: »

Though I haven't tried it myself, the dell de-crapifier would probably be useful. It's an automated script that removes all the extra junk that dells ship with, and are on the restore partitions hidden on the laptop. The download is here.

Nice! That's actually going to cut my work in half :P

Thanks guys, you'be been VERY helpful. I almost feel bad for taking all my girlfriend's praise